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The newest and to many people most beautiful spacecraft to enter commercial service is Alpha Centauri's passenger liner, Starblade. This striking and original design represents the first step in Alpha's drive to expand her interests in the travel industry. Until recent years the passenger transportation market has been dominated by Terran ships such as the ubiquitous Interstellar Queen. The rapid growth in the volume of tourist traffic to the exotic Alpha One has always been encouraged by the Alpha Centaurians as a means of supplementing their limited industrial export revenue.

In the past their investment programme has been geared towards providing suitable facilities and attractions within their system to stimulate the development of the tourist industry. Once the pattern of growth appeared to he firmly established, they directed their attention to the possibility of providing the means by which the tourist travelled to and from their planets.

Considerable funds were allocated to the design and development of a craft suitable for this purpose and the result wait the Starblade. The entire programme had been cloaked in utmost secrecy and even the prototypes' test flights were conducted under maximum security.

The first Starblade to enter service in 2096 did so in the greatest blaze of publicity the worlds have ever known, and there can be few people who would not recognize this glittering vessel.

Advertising superlatives aside, the Starblade is undoubtedly one or the most advanced ships of its kind and possesses many features which set standards for all subsequent spacecraft.

Although its passenger accommodation offered an extremely high degree of comfort there was nothing revolutionary about it. The real innovations were not visible to the casual spectator and lay in the ship's warp guidance system. Until now, a ship emerging from a jump could never be sure of its exact position, and to be safe Jumps were always calculated within acceptable margins. This meant that re-entries always left an appreciable amount of space to be crossed under conventional power. The journey time was also increased by the need for vessels to recharge their power banks after the enormous drainage that resulted from such a jump. The Starblade possessed a warp monitoring system sophisticated enough lot the ship to emerge from a jump so close to the destination that the minimum of charge time was required to provide enough energy to reach the target point.

Once there, of course, there was sufficient time to complete the recharging necessary for the return journey, This reduced travel time by almost sixty per cent and the saving in conventional fuels meant that the Starblade could undertake more voyages in a given time with lower running costs than any of her competitors. This distinctive and elegant craft was the forerunner of today's latest spaceliners and is still the mainstay of Alpha's passenger fleet.